Roger Moore

A proper whodunit, as twist-turny as you might expect, and as amusingly edgy and cutting as its title suggests.

Witty, warm and wistful and in just the right proportions, Spectacular is the best-acted film of the summer.

Haley’s movies have an old-fashioned comfort food quality, and this sits happily on the menu with his earlier works.

Krieps makes her journey into this open wound not just intriguing, but heartbreaking.

Watching unhappy, uncertain children grow in confidence as they learn, bond and then run loving, yipping, straining sled dogs is incredibly touching.

This quick, short Sundance Film Festival award winner leaves out a lot more about Brinkley than in it includes. But save your trip to the library (or Wikipedia) for after the film. The surprises, comic and tragic, are worth waiting for.

The tennis, with augmented sound, shotmaking, balls-eye-view camera work and the like, dazzles. And whatever the strengths of the leads, the sexual dynamics of this relationship are every bit as of America at this “moment” as the beautiful biracial player’s “color” that the script takes pains to point out.

Pig hangs on Cage’s soulful intensity in the part, a man who used to be somebody who, as one contemptuous old acquaintance hisses “doesn’t exist” now.

Sorry We Missed You is Loach’s intimate, scathing take on life in the “gig economy,” a family not getting ahead or even holding its own, but swimming as frantically as it can even as they spiral down the drain. It’s his best film in years, and with a resume that includes “My Name is Joe” and “The Angel’s Share,” that’s saying something.

It strips away the myth and icon and reveals Jobs for the hustler-huckster he was, just a smooth, smiling turtleneck, trying to sell us something. In many ways, his film makes all other Jobs movies unnecessary.

Ford, in a performance as affecting as any he’s ever given, lifts this romance in ways we never see coming.

Whatever leftovers The Holdovers serve up, Payne and his once-and-future-muse Giamatti make this cinematic comfort food perfectly palatable.

Although the arc of the story is quite conventional in terms of Ruben’s “stages of death and dying” journey, the script and Ahmed’s affecting, sympathetic performance make us cling to the same hopes that Ruben does, that he can recover some of his hearing, maybe enough to get some of his life back.

Fuji’s performance is the highlight here, a man of science and obsessive Ham radio buff struggling to communicate what he’s going through but failing to soften his personality as his memory, and the self-control it might contain, fail.

What we’re left with is a stark reminder that, “BlackKklansman” aside, it’s possible to agree with most everything Spike Lee says in his movies these days while lamenting the decline in his storytelling skills and his unwillingness to edit them into sharper focus.

Operatic in tone, a love poem that’s “Howl” raw in scope and despair, The Last Black Man in San Francisco is a deadpan elegy to a city, its ever-shifting populace, family lore and the weight of the past.

It’s clever to the edge of brilliant, and damned funny, start to finish.

A rough and rough around the edges tale of children growing up on the mean streets of the wrong side of Brooklyn. It’s a coming of age story of a self-absorbed, downtrodden punk with a dream who learns about the love that comes with responsibility.

Reichardt’s serene, slow style means that even the big incidents in these stories pack no punch.

The Mercury 13 started getting their due in the ’90s, when the first woman to pilot the Space Shuttle took off. This illuminating, artful and inspiring film completes that process.

I can’t say Seventeen sprints by, but its many grace notes make up for the slack pace.

As the folks in this rise and fall of Pharma Frauds saga could tell you, it’s the third act where all the consequences show up and the piper must be paid. That’s where this story’s make-or-break moments are parked, and there are too few of them to let it get off the screen with as much promise as it opened with.

Bell, appearing on camera but speaking in voice-over like everybody else, makes the celebration fun and the tragedy bittersweet in this fine tribute to the mother she only got to know and appreciate “too late” to gain the full benefits of being raised by an icon.

None of it adds up to much more than a chuckle or two, a smile or three and a lot of slow, poetically drawn-out moments of mild anguish or the simple delight of walking through Greenwich Village in the spring.

The portrait that emerges is that of a dogged, principled (by Russian standards) muckraker who exposes corruption in the Russian oligarchy, an accomplished TikTok/Youtube warrior who uses such platforms to broadcast his exposes and organize his movement since most Russian media are afraid to cover him.

Spiro has still gotten a striking, gritty and touching debut feature out of this cast, a movie that may lack much in the way of surprises but makes up for it with toughness, empathy and realism.

Howard’s magnetic performance, delivered in a blizzard of mood-swing close-ups, hints at any number of possibilities.

The performances and Greengrass’s way with action immerse us and make Captain Phillips a tight, taut,edge of your seat thriller even if you remember the ending.

A tight, minimalist thriller this smart, rhetoric-based turning towards violence and its repercussions, is too good and too important to ignore.

The Climb invites us along for the ride and keeps our interest, whether or not love or bromance, as they say, finds a way.

It’s never less than epic, never less than the new benchmark in Viking stories put on film.

What gives it’s juice is the supporting cast. John Bernthal (“The Walking Dead”) is credibly wary as the ex-con John begs to get him in the door of the drug world. And the terrific Michael Kenneth Williams is the first dealer he meets, a guy who pulls a gun on him just to test him.

Gnecco, a Chilean comic actor well-known all over Latin America for assorted TV series, smirks and recites and plays Neruda as the legend he was and the role of a lifetime he’s become.

John McEnroe: In the Realm of Perfection is quite simply the greatest tennis film ever made and one of the finest documentaries to honor any sport.

The saving grace of “As It Was” is Gallagher’s saving grace as well, that John Lennon-meets-John Lydon voice, the songs he wrote or co-wrote that brought him back from the dead, the album that restored his place in British rock.

It’s a near miracle that anyone could get a movie out of this. But Ozon, like Visconti before him, has. It’s not for the sentimental, the conventional or the faithful. But The Stranger, in book or its latest cinematic form, is for the intellectually curious and questioning. Just don’t go expecting it to provide many answers.

David Dastmalchian wrote and co-stars in this generic but well-acted trip down junky lane.

The romantic comedy elements here are just offbeat enough to appeal. But with every encounter with the needles, the music and the Song of Back and Neck, the pitch rises and the laughs — awkward and endlessly surprising — turn to cackles and then guffaws.

Sicario is a conventionally unconventional drug wars thriller, a well-cast, breathlessly executed peek into the heart of a Trumpian nightmare of Mexican cartels which kill at will on either side of an embattled border.

Gorgeous and almost shockingly moving.

In Mary, Leigh has found the polar opposite of Sally Hawkin's giggle-through-the-pain heroine of "Happy-Go-Lucky."

More impressive than moving, more thought-provoking than heartfelt — chilling in its magnificence.

Step is an inspiring documentary.

Experimenter is a capital example of that prophet-ahead-of-his-time narrative, a movie about a scientist who lived (just) long enough to revel in the fact that he was onto something before everybody else. And that he was right.

Hot Flashes don’t generate much heat — comical or otherwise. A pity, since that rare menopause comedy is a terrible thing to waste.

It’s a solid film, but the mission creep of its many messages, its format — interviews broken up by vintage news footage, old movies (“The Birth of a Nation”) — and a stylistic choice by DuVernay dull its impact.

Action-packed and impressively stupid.

Arrival puts Villeneuve, who first came to attention with “Incendies,” firmly in the first rank of filmmakers, a director capable of not just entertaining, but challenging. And the wide-eyed Adams, near the top of the list of the best actresses never to win an Oscar, delivers another riveting, melancholy and life-affirming performance that threatens to change that, maybe as soon as next February.

Cregger, like Jordan Peele and Robert Eggers, knows that smart horror is the best horror. And that any horror movie that starts arguments and conversations the moment the credits roll is a winner.

For all its attempts at delivering a heartfelt message, the finale is more something that unravels than resolves. But Everything Everywhere All at Once is still something to see, something that demands to be seen in a cinema, mouth agape at the wonders playing out on the huge wall — the bigger the IMAX the better — in front of you.

It's a gritty, almost ugly to look at film, and Cianfrance isn't shy about including a random blast of unwarranted shaky footage.

I like the way Dhont gives viewers room to make up our own minds about what’s happening and come to different conclusions than you’d expect from him, given the subject matter and the tack his first two feature films have taken.

Truman becomes a bittersweet character study in death and friendship, a film that lets the sweet overcome the bitter.

Equal parts funny and forlorn, with a smattering of the violence that always been a sort of Emerald Isle background noise, The Banshees of Inisherin is Martin McDonagh’s most Irish film, because it’s a lot like Ireland itself.

For long stretches, Godzilla Minus One concentrates on relationships and conversations, which despite their intent, do little to advance the plot or illuminate simply-drawn characters.

Rock is more a genial presence here than an actor playing an addict tested by a bad day. He never lets us see the strain that could make him fall off the wagon. He scores laughs, but generously leaves the outrageous stuff to his legion of supporting players.

A two and a half hour Icelandic parable isn’t going to be to every taste. But Pálmason, framing his movie in old still photograph 1.33.1 aspect ratio, immerses us in a place and a time — beautiful, unspoiled and eternal. And he makes us question, as Lucas, Ragnar and others do, the function of faith in such circumstances, and the usefulness of those who insist on proselytizing without listening.

The whole enterprise is amusing, warm and embracing, so much so that English words fall short of perfectly summing up this utterly charming film. Only a Spanish word will do. “Encantada.”

In covering all the bases, the film’s energy can’t help but flag in the later acts. But Cortes has made an impressive music history that restores a “king” to his rightful place in rock royalty, one that acknowledges that everything outrageous about the music and the people who perform it, the stuff “your parents hated” about it, as Waters puts it, started with Little Richard Penniman.

Fey plays this inner-outer conflict well. But at her most wide-eyed and vulnerable, she still has trouble making a romance credible, even with Rudd, edgy comedy’s puppy dog of a leading man.

Long, patient and chilling, it vividly captures a time in America and the feel of divided Berlin in the muted blues and greys that color our memories of that “duck and cover” age.

A dialogue-free romp that is a shear delight, shear perfection, if not quite a master-fleece.

Carell, though, is the real shock to the system here. He is quirky, queer in the old fashioned sense, and pathetically funny.

Nixon scores the film’s one laugh-out-loud moment. Nobody else generates anything more than a weak chuckle.

Mendoza’s pitch, to “get it right” and have “real combat vets” have their story told, might be noble in its intention and the tribute (stay through the credits) to their service the film represents. But he and Garland emphasize authenticity over empathy, accuracy over dramatic connection.

There’s nothing salacious in the new documentary about the Bureau’s investigation of King, MLK/FBI. What this film sets out to document, put into context and explain is something that began life as Bureau File Number 100-106670 and that came to look, with hindsight, like a vendetta against the civil rights leader and Nobel laureate.

Portman lets us feel the way her loss utterly empties life of meaning and purpose. But Chilean director Pablo Larrain (“The Club”) lets little John Jr. (Aiden and Brody Weinberg) provide the heart-wrenching release, just as he did back at that state funeral in 1963.

Beware of any advertising that labels Andersson “wacky” and this a comedy. Even by deadpan Swedish standards, this is pretty dry.

Ford has made a downbeat, realistic treatment of this subject that doesn’t have a built-in call-to-arms as part of its make-up. That’s implied. Nobody, no couples, should have to go through this.

It’s a fascinating and utterly engrossing film, immersing us in this world, fretting over what we can see coming before the principals do, and relating it to the xenophobia and bigotry out in the open in America, just as it is in backward, rural Transylvania.

Anderson loses his way, failing to thin out the novel and its overload of characters, piling scene upon scene that neither amusingly complicates the plot, nor advances it. Phoenix, however, is never less than fun.

There have been better documentaries this year, but none of them are the roller-coaster ride that Three Identical Strangers turns out to be.

Little Trouble Girls is a conventional girls’ coming-of-age tale whose clever twist is equating sexual awakening with spiritual awakening, at least in the eyes and ears of an impressionable teen.

Director Luke Lorentzen (“New York Cuts”) puts us in the front seat of the Med Care van staffed by the men of the Ochoa family, freelance entrepreneurs trying to feed and care for a big family from inside an ambulance. Their story has thrills and compassion, hard luck and grief.

Tina is a summarization and a celebration.

Almost everything about the writing, publishing, fame-fighting and Monk confronting his own prejudices, seems truncated to make more room for family drama. And while the relationship with his sister (Ross) seems beautifully lived-in until it’s chopped off, and every moment Wright and Brown trade jibes, jabs and affectionate brotherly connections is rewarding, nothing else delivers at that level.

Here’s a fascinating piece of history that escaped much of the world’s notice, when it happened back in 1988.

Hollywood treats the road to revenge as straight, narrow and bloody. With Riders of Justice, Jensen considers the myriad other places such a path can lead and finds regret, heart and humor along the way.

If you have any recollection of the original film at all, it’s too easy to note that scene by scene, character by character and plot element by plot element, they remade it slightly less funny and somewhat less touching in most every regard.

One of the epic star vehicles of Ava Gardner‘s career earned a nice restoration a couple of years back. So if nothing else, Ava at her peak in glorious Technicolor should be lure enough to draw one to “Pandora and the Flying Dutchman.”

In Fabric takes a while to settle in, and that goes for the viewing experience, too. It takes a few minutes for us to surf the wave Strickland wants us on, to get in sync with the vibe he’s going for...But rare is the horror movie that finds off-the-rack laughs in everything from ’70s fashions and consumerism to ’70s British sex and slang, and does it with haute couture style.

Del Toro’s robots have weight and mass, and their epic, Hong Kong-smashing fights with the four and six-legged, clawed and horned monsters are visually coherent, unlike the messy blur of the “Transformers” movies. There’s a light, humorous feel to “Pacific Rim” because the science is silly and logic takes a flying leap.

Yes, this remake is old fashioned, and maybe the “mark” (Alex Sharp of “How to Talk to Girls at Parties”) is a tad green and less interesting. But sometimes, it’s fun watching two wildly different stars mix it up in sumptuous settings, and seemingly have a ball doing it.

Accepted isn’t as thorough as you’d expect (Again, NO teachers are interviewed.). But it succeeds by not offering a simple black and white take on what went on and what is going on with how schools “accept” students and just how arbitrary that unjust system is.

Taken by itself, it’s thought-provoking enough to pass muster. Get “Get Out” out of your head, because truly, all Peele’s two thrillers have in common is hype.

The Big Short becomes not just amusing and explanatory, a real tour de force for its fast-talking cast.

Filmmakers Lowell and Mortimer were there to document every excruciating inch, with stunning Yosemite scenery as their backdrop for almost every striking frame. The film they got out of it is, like the experience they were documenting, one of a kind.

Among that promising cast, only Plummer and Ehle give us anything more than paint-by-numbers turns. Travolta? He’s a pale imitation of himself, as ill-fitted to the role as that odd prison soul patch he sports under Ray’s carefully streaked mop of hair.

A moving, hilarious and stunningly-animated adventure epic.

The stakes could not be more intimate and personal here, but as reassured as we might be that something like “due process” and “common sense” will prevail, Wright and O’Connor do a good job of playing people who aren’t so sure, whose faith in people — not the state — to show compassion has its limits.

It’s not one of [Zhang’s] very best, not on a par with “Hero” (Jet Li’s finest hour) or “House of Flying Daggers” even. But it still becomes a rousing, stately entry in the martial arts genre. Eventually.

The King is something of a tin-eared bore and a massive waste of time.

Stolen Vacation is a stumbling, slow-footed Mexican “vacation” comedy (titled “Viaje Todo Robado” in Spanish) that barely gets out the front door, fails to arrive at its destination and never once gets up to speed.

The Edge of Democracy won’t convince that “It CAN happen here.” It’ll make you wonder how far down the hole we’ve already tumbled.

It begins with grand promise and achieves spectacle — via digitally-assisted stunts, explosions, etc. — on a scale that raises the bar on popcorn pic action. If only it all seemed justifiable and logical.

The performances and the milieu, with its colorful colloquial speech and loving if blundering sisterly relationships, is what sells “Premature” and makes it an indie film well worth your time.

Skyfall is far and away the best, and the most British of the Daniel Craig-James Bond movies.

One serious omission in the film - identifying what these seemingly prosperous alumni of the band do for a living and did with their lives.